In Between
by Jack Hawksmoor
Summary: V for Vendetta. What happened before Evey left him again.
1. Chapter 1

How long did she spend out there on the rooftop? One hour? Ten? It was still dark when she turned away from the city, when she turned back to her captor, her tormentor, standing at the threshold. It was still dark, but it felt as though she'd spent her whole life up there. As if the weight of the last hour was so great it counterbalanced every other lesson she'd ever learned, every other moment she'd ever lived, every other person she'd ever loved.

He was watching her. She couldn't see any eyes but he was watching her like she filled up the whole world in front of him. Had he watched her, weeping in the dark all those nights? It seemed suddenly as though he must have, as though there couldn't have been any other choice for him. Seeing what he could make her. Watching what she would become, in spite of him. Feeling what she was making him. What had he sacrificed, she wondered, to become a piece of what he hated so much? What parts of himself did he have to kill? For her.

He was, she thought with a tiny shock, one of the best friends she'd ever had.

She'd eaten well, before they'd come to get her. Her final meal, she had thought. The food had weighed heavy on her stomach. It was odd, then, that as she walked towards him, her friend, her tormentor, she felt so...light. As if she could jump into the sky and fly away. Second star to the right and straight on 'til morning.

He said nothing, but he seemed to brace himself against her approach. She wondered what she looked like to him. She wondered if he thought she might strike him. She considered it. She considered killing him. She considered throwing herself into his arms.

She stopped, at the threshold.

Reached out to him with a thin, wet hand. Touched his chest. He was human, underneath. She felt him catch his breath. She looked up at him, up to where eyes should be and felt the strength in her own hand. Then, silently, she moved past him. She didn't remember where the stairs were, could barely remember anything at all before the rooftop. The echo of that joy was still ringing in her ears, rumbling through her chest, making everything else seem faint and unreal.

She felt his hands, the warm leather gloves on her shoulders and something inside her gave way. Lightly, joyfully, Evey lifted up and took flight.


	2. Chapter 2

She woke up with a sob in her throat. A habit from prison, mourning lost dreams and the return to an unforgiving reality. For a moment she was confused as to why the tears didn't come, why she felt so happy. Why she was comfortable.

The memory flashed back to her with such an intensity she thought she might incandesce. She opened her eyes, looking around wildly...it had to be real...it HAD to be true...

V sat beside her, folded comfortably into an elderly chair. She froze, relief stealing her breath..

Truth.

She wasn't in the book room. She was somewhere she'd never been before. Behind one of the locked doors. The bed she was lying on felt almost obscenely soft, after so long on bare floors. It was a canopy, with red curtains pulled back. She looked over at V, and after a moment of rising disbelief realized he was sleeping. She debated back and forth for a moment, sure he was simply sitting quietly, but there was no reaction to her awakening. After some small time he shifted a little in the chair and she relaxed, convinced.

She drew herself up on an elbow, and noticed she was wearing something black and soft and too large for her. She thought about that as she watched him. He had brought clothes from her own closet for her to wear, the first time she'd woken up in his home. At the time it had frightened her badly. After spending months hiding out in Gordon's flat wearing mens clothing, she had a sneaking suspicion V had meant it as a kindness.

She had left everything behind when she'd run away. Theoretically she should still have clothes to wear. He'd dressed her in his own clothes instead.

She thought, paradoxically, that he had meant that, too, as a kindness. He'd tried to wrap her in his cape on the roof, she thought with a sharp stab of memory. She touched the sleeve. Black like his cape.

Evey looked over at him. Had he put her in his bed? It seemed likely, though in the weeks she'd stayed with him she had nearly convinced herself that he never slept at all. She remembered hearing him on the piano very late at night. No matter how little she'd slept he always seemed to be doing something. She woke once from nightmares and found him sitting quietly in front of a painting, looking at it like he'd never seen it before. Just a woman in a boat. The Lady of Shalot. He'd spent an hour telling her the story. He'd even sung "Tirra Lira" for her.

She reached out across the distance between them and laid her hand on his arm. Her touch was light, even affectionate, but it woke him anyway. He jumped a little, under her fingers. The man who'd nearly drowned her, who'd hung her up by her wrists for hours, who'd sung her "Tirra Lira" and laid her in his own bed.

"Evey." He said, sounding caught off guard. He straightened hastily in the chair. He did not ask her if she was all right. That would have been an insult to both of them. She thought he was looking at her hand on his arm. After a hesitation, he covered her fingers with his.

"You must be hungry." There was some awkwardness in his voice. As if he was thinking of her long nights with almost nothing to eat.

"Did you eat, when I couldn't?" She asked him, suddenly bold. His mask came up sharply. Did he look thinner than he had before? Covered as he was, it was difficult to tell...

He withdrew from her. He stood, gesturing towards a chair in the corner, piled in cloth.

"I brought some of the things you left, if you'd care to dress." He sounded very strange, almost embarrassed... With a sharp twist of intuition she saw the truth of it. He hadn't eaten. Not one bloody bite before she did.

She shivered, fingering the dark fabric he'd wrapped her in, oddly reluctant to trade it in for something else. He watched her do it, and his posture changed. Softened, somehow.

"I'll eat if you will." She said quietly. He went still for a minute, as if considering what to do, what to say. Then, with some real reverence, he bowed his head to her.

"As you wish." He didn't deny anything, and she almost smiled at him. He stared at her for a little bit too long before he left her. Her mind picked at it as she looked through her clothes. Pieces in her mind, turning them around, trying to make them fit.

She almost missed the paper on the table. She stared at it for nearly a minute with a slow, numb shock creeping in at her before she let herself realize what it was.

Valerie. She snatched it up with a fierce protectiveness, not thinking, not really thinking until she unrolled it again, looked at it again. It was a strange mixture of love and hate that snuck over her. Not Valerie. She wasn't real. Just V.

If he asked her to stay, it was just possible that she might kill him.

If he let her go, she might just have to love him.

She was crying, so she wiped at her face, put the paper back on the table and went to breakfast in her own clothes.


	3. Chapter 3

He made her eggs and that made her think of Gordon. Gordon in his kitchen, wiggling his eyebrows and teasing her.

'Beneath this wrinkled, pudgy exterior'...she couldn't remember the rest...something about faustian fetishes. It bothered her that she couldn't remember.

She could so clearly see that last look of terror before they dragged him away.

"He said it was beautiful." She said quietly. V turned from the stove to look at her. "Gordon." She explained. She looked back down at her plate. "When he showed me his Koran, I asked him, why keep it if he wasn't muslim. He said...he said it was beautiful." Her voice caught a little, so she filled her mouth with toast.

She spent the next few minutes eating very fast. She stopped to breathe when she felt his hand on her arm.

"You'll make yourself sick." He cautioned.

"I don't care." Evey said and slapped her fork on the table, hard. " I didn't even look at it!" She was nearly shouting. She stopped herself when he took his hand away.

"He said it was beautiful. They executed him for having it and I didn't even look at it." She put her hands in her lap and took a deep breath. She wasn't hungry any more.

"Evey..." His voice was gentle, thoughtful. She shut her eyes, briefly, against the sound of it. When she looked up he was watching her, head tilted. With sure fingers he removed his apron and turned off the stove. "Come with me."

She knew what it was when he lifted it out of the cupboard. It wasn't the same, but she knew...This book was small, made to fit in someone's hand. He gave it to her like it was alive. Fragile. Very old. She opened it carefully, surprised by the sheen of gold leaf on the pages. She didn't quite touch the script, passing her fingers over it.

"I can't read it." She admitted, looking up, startled to find him leaning so close.

"Nor can I." He copied her gesture, brushing gloved fingers lightly over the unfamiliar words. " But the inherent nature of an object is not helped or hindered by the ineptitude of its observers." She lowered the book and stared at him, raising her eyebrows. He put a hand at her back.

"This is beautiful." He said gently. "Understood or not."

She almost smiled, looking down at the softly shining pages.

"Yes, it is." She said, and something inside her loosened, relaxed. She shut the book, felt the shape of it, the heft of it in her hands.

"Keep it, if you like." V offered. His tone of voice seemed to imply he would say the same thing if presented the opportunity to give her Nelson's column, the stars in the sky, or perhaps his soul. For a breath of time Evey regarded him narrowly.

She looked down at the book. There couldn't be many of them left. It was tempting... No doubt that it would be safer where it was. If she was caught...it would be burned, surely. Just like her. She would hope they'd take the time to shoot her first.

She held it out to him.

"I can't." She told him, and meant it. A little of the life seemed to go out of him. He took it back, seemed to be about to say something. Changed his mind. He studied his boots for a moment.

"Of course." There was even an attempt at a laugh in his voice. As if they both were suddenly too stupid to see, as if it had meant nothing at all for him to offer.

She took a step back from him. The next step was easier. V pretended not to notice, turning to put the book back in it's place. She went back to the room with the red curtains and collected a few things into a bag.

She didn't know where she would go.

She didn't expect it mattered very much.

Before she left she took Valerie's letter from the table. V's letter. She almost kept it. Almost put it in her bag. But not quite.


End file.
